PERILOUS PROFESSIONS


PERILOUS PROFESSIONS

A street vendor is offering mats with kaleidoscopic designs around the Gofa neighbourhood. The thousands of agile vendors scattered about the capital conduct their businesses, evading the watchful eye and whipping baton of the Code Enforcement Authority. As the Addis Abeba City Administration looks to either register and extract taxes from the network of informal businessmen or remove them from the streets, a daily cat-and-mouse spectacle unfolds in the capital. Estimates place the size of the urban informal employment sector at somewhere between 20 and 40pc, with the vast discrepancies partly stemming from a population census lagging for 17 years.

[ssba-buttons]

In-Picture

UNCOVERED WILDERNESS

The long-shuttered plot at Mexico Square finally breathes again as fences come down, revealing a vast open space once hidden from public view earmarked for Abyssinia Bank's future headquarters. The site now stretches bare and sunlit, drawing curious passersby, midday loungers, and a lone umbrella-shaded onlooker. In a city of concrete and congestion, even temporary emptiness feels like a quiet revolution. It now showcases a wilderness in the middle of the busy streets of Mexico...


In-Picture

GO SEEK

Minalesh Tera, one of Addis Abeba's busiest and most chaotic markets, draws hundreds if not thousands daily in search of cheaper essentials. Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds navigate narrow, dusty paths between makeshift stalls, where vendors hawk everything from onions and engine parts to plasticware and traditional remedies. It's a sensory overload and a lifeline rolled into one, an open-air maze where the practical meets the unexpected, and affordability drives the city's daily grind...


In-Picture

TERMINAL TREASURES

From left: Jantirar Abay, Deputy Mayor and Head of the Industry Bureau; Ayderus H.M. Farag, CEO of Alfarag Trading PLC; and Getaneh Adera, Acting CEO of Ethiopian Airports, chat during the opening of Alfarag's refurbished duty-free shops at Bole International Airport on June 18, 2025. The two stores, located in Terminal 2's Departure Hall, span 1,000sqm. Alfarag, established in Dire Dawa in 1923, became Ethiopia's first private duty-free retailer in 2003...